[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Nekira Sudacne]

We still need a City named Pink Dot in honor of PB1, but sadly all the good Actual Pink Dots (Hyper-aggressive plants) are gone, so we may have to settle for an honorary pink dot.

[Brian Shanahan]

We still need a City named Pink Dot in honor of PB1, but sadly all the good Actual Pink Dots (Hyper-aggressive plants) are gone, so we may have to settle for an honorary pink dot.

Pink Dot would be more in honour of the ISDG which took place over at Apolyton back in the day, which set the ball rolling here if I remember correctly.

[Nekira Sudacne]

We still need a City named Pink Dot in honor of PB1, but sadly all the good Actual Pink Dots (Hyper-aggressive plants) are gone, so we may have to settle for an honorary pink dot.

Pink Dot would be more in honour of the ISDG which took place over at Apolyton back in the day, which set the ball rolling here if I remember correctly.

Correct, I just think of it as the "First" one for that reason. The technical term would be "PB Alpha" I think

[antisocialmunky]

Aren't there some epic FFH ones? I have no experience with any of those.

[Der_Zorn_Gottes]

What about the PBE where Commodore was placed in the middle of four other players, played the game with a "ok fine I am the human barbarian then" mentality and actually managed to win it in the end?

[greenline]

What about the PBE where Commodore was placed in the middle of four other players, played the game with a "ok fine I am the human barbarian then" mentality and actually managed to win it in the end?

That one was more memorable for fluguato's attempt to destroy Commodore's economy by spamming spies to pillage happy resources, imo

[Jkaen]

does it have to be a multiplayer game, or could you go with spain on a lake, which i think was the first game i ever read up

[Nekira Sudacne]

Yesss...We need a city named Hydra. Alternately, HinBuJew

[scooter]

Turn 239-242

We tend to blaze through turns on weekends, and I never have time on weekends to report it seems. So here's a blitz through of what I've been up to.



This is a few turns old now, but it looks to me like Mackoti not having ORG is starting to give him some pain. The courthouses have helped tremendously, as even on a non-Toroidal map the maintenance is pretty rough without Courthouses. Fortunately for Mackoti, Alhazard's hilariously bad GNP might just get him into the Communism race and help him out. Also, some other things that I'll get to in a second. First, I went on a settling spree.



I decided to go ahead and expand outside the PB/PBEM universe. This one's a succession game - probably my favorite one at that.



Not 10 days go by without a discussion at RB happening over the origins of Pink Dot. Its "origin" is from about 6 different games including the Civ3 era, so I decided to just let it honor whatever you want it to be. Since there wasn't an obvious "Pink Dot" location, I decided to do the ironic thing and pick a backlines city that I only care about for the Stone. Longterm this city is meh, but I can make it worthwhile by farming everything and running scientists.



This is vague, so I'll say it was from a Pitboss game. Guess away. This city will also get the farm and scientist treatment. We've got a lack of coastal cities, and I'm a tad concerned about that later in the game, so here's a start at that. It's not an amazing city, but we're into filling in the cracks mode here.



(I went with the "Cuban" name because it just felt right geographically.)

So then there's this city which I wrote off as a "pipe dream" just last week. Here's what happened:

1) RMoG settled this area, but for whatever reason settled the silver right in Mackoti's face rather than this much less threatening gold. Well, I understand why - it's a better city. I think he was hoping I would drag my feet on settling this gold.

2) I did not drag my feet. Culture Victory opened Galley first sped by a chop which got me a galley out in 2T. Pocketbeetle whipped a settler timed to load up on the first turn the galley came out, and I settled this spot.

3) During the middle of all this, Mackoti sniped two RMoG cities. He has yet to make peace. More on this below.

4) I decided to stay the course and settle this city anyway despite Galleons rolling into these waters. I've got a few more turns of enforced peace with Mackoti during which I'll try to get some Pikes into this city. Mackoti and I theoretically have a 30T NAP (well, more like 25T left), and I guess we'll see if he honors it. He's got a track record of not honoring deals, but he actually has never broken a deal with me despite playing in quite a few games with me at this point.

5) In addition to the NAP situation, I think Mackoti would be foolish to provoke me at this stage, especially when much, much softer targets are available to him. I've got like 4 more cities than he does, more population, and Altars. I might not have Phracts or Galleons, but I've got the sheer population count to produce a ton of units and ruin his game. Quantity is a quality of its own and all that. So the short version: I don't think he'll roll this dice, especially since much softer targets abound. It's close enough though that I could very well be wrong, but I felt like I would regret not trying to get an island on this body of water while I could.

Anyway, let's survey the Mackoti damage.





Bad news: he's all in here:



Taking these islands here is tactically crucial, because it gives him a wide-open window into the heart of the two weakest players. (It's also a bit of a giveaway for his future plans.) This is the difference between our starting position and RMoG's.



Mackoti is mobilizing hardcore, and he has yet to make peace with RMoG. That said, I think he might have something else in mind:



He's actually mobilizing closer to the Alhazard front than RMoG front. I think he's going to invade Alhazard. I think the plan is to wait a couple turns, and then sign a peace deal that RMoG will badly want (maybe by threatning their coastline with Galleons). That'll give him a 10T window to turn and hit a surprised Alhazard, which he is hoping would disrupt his speed towards Communism, handing Mackoti the free spy + Kremlin.

So there's my theory. I guess we watch and wait now?

Domestically, I'm prepping for the Statue pretty soon. I've got 200% modifiers in the capital (Bureau + Forge + OR + Copper), so I would kinda like to avoid using the Engineer if I can. I think I'd get a lot more value out of him putting 1k beakers into Replaceable Parts to get me closer to Rifling than burning him to get a smaller number of hammers in a city where I've got 200% modifiers... That said, it really just depends on whether or not REM decides to challenge me for this. He just finished Education, so we'll see whether he continues onto Printing Press or not. Getting to watch his teching helps a great deal.

[antisocialmunky]

Please get city visibility on Mackoti so we can watch the fireworks :D